Sunday, January 20, 2013

Death notices

My wife was recently dismayed at the steep charge to have her aunt's obituary placed in her hometown newspaper. Andrew Sullivan and his readers are discussing this matter as well in this post and this post, neither of which you should click on if expletives offend.

Posted at 04:05:51 PM

Comments

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Beyond the matter of cost, the obituaries in our community (Ann Arbor) are always presented as a single, unbroken paragraph, and I believe that this is a common practice elsewhere. One is given the information about parents, children, church, military service, education, occupation, hobbies, travels, addresses, fraternal associations, honors and encomiums in a relentless stream so that reading them is much like taking a drink from a fire hose. This does not do well in the service of others appreciating the qualities of the departed.

Also: Ann Arbor's newspaper, a combination of daily on-line and twice weekly printed edition for a metropolitan area with 150,000 people, charges $7 per line of 4 or 5 words, so a 300 word obituary would be in the $400-$500 range.

Yips, 400-500 dollars for a 300 word paragraph that is all crammed into a small print one-paragraph.

Yes, obits are the one place where there has not been much of a decline, as people die every day, more of them every day. And the necessity of such a notice in most people's mind generate a steady stream of income.

Then on the lgihter side, typos can occur, just ask Larry of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

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